Peak Oil News and Message Boards

PenultimateManStanding wrote:It's looking to me like the resource depletion issue is going to matter if/when we come out of this savage financial tailspin we're in. Commodity prices are plunging. It's very possible, imo, that we never will. This is it, the Big One.

evilgenius wrote: Hedge funds and other means of stashing off-shore money have played a huge role in preventing inflation via their virtualization of money.

There isn't going to be any hyper-inflation, not across the board. Some asset classes will see no rise in price post deflationary shake out because the competition necessary for such rises will have a hard time materializing.

That isn't what you were asking, though. I think what you are referring to is the activity of the rich getting out of less safe investment instruments and into safer instruments, through what can be properly termed legitimate hedge activity, that is to say fleeing uncertain assets for the security of the US dollar. I guess it depends upon what sort of asset classes are involved (whether a country is losing its future or only a speculative excess) and how the mechanism is going through (whether the rush out is predominantly a certain type of money, m1, m2, m3) as pertains to that country as to what sort of immediate effect it will have.

In any event, he was clearly a smart thief who enjoyed picking the low hanging fruit. He said so. A personality like that cares no more for his investors than he does for the rubes he cheats on trades.

Sixstrings wrote:

In any event, he was clearly a smart thief who enjoyed picking the low hanging fruit. He said so. A personality like that cares no more for his investors than he does for the rubes he cheats on trades.

I agree, RE.

This is an incredibly bizarre letter from someone in his position. Then he starts going on about hemp, and that just makes it all smell tinfoil to me. But I guess this letter checks out as genuine?

But really, if you are going to make an exit with a boatload of cash.. well, that is something one wants to do quietly, for a number of reasons.

During the final months of 2008, as the financial markets imploded, talk on trading desks turned to food and water stockpiles, generators, guns, and high-speed inflatable boats. “The system really was about six hours from failing,” says Gene Lange, a manager at a midtown hedge fund, referring to the week in September when Lehman went bust and AIG had to be bailed out. “When you think about how close we were to the precipice, I don’t think it necessarily makes a guy crazy to prepare for the potential worst-case scenario.”

Preparations, in Lange’s case, include a storeroom in his basement in New Jersey stacked high with enough food, water, diapers, and other necessities to last his family six months; a biometric safe to hold his guns; and a 1985 ex-military Chevy K5 Blazer that runs on diesel and is currently being retrofitted for off-road travel. He has also entertained the idea of putting an inflatable speedboat in a storage unit on the West Side, so he could get off the island quickly, and is currently considering purchasing a remote farm where he could hunker down. “If there’s a financial-system breakdown, it could take a year to reset the system, and in that time, what’s going to happen?” asks Lange.

cipi604 wrote:We welcome the hedge funds to a hard cold sudden reality ... let them eat cake.

Investors in a Sarasota-based hedge fund could be out $350 million, and the man behind it has vanished.
Managers of the fund are telling clients that their money is gone, and they do not know if any will be recovered.
Fund principal Arthur G. Nadel, a prominent player in Sarasota social and philanthropic circles, disappeared this week. His wife, Peg, filed a missing person report with law enforcement after finding a suicide note.

Investors — from individuals to the Sarasota YMCA Foundation — in the funds branded Viking, Valhalla and Scoop were stunned this week to learn they may be victims in what could become the largest investment swindle in Southwest Florida history. Despite the carnage on Wall Street last year, investors had been told their investments earned more than 8 percent as of November.

Some are already calling it a “mini-Madoff,” after accused investment scammer Bernard Madoff of New York, who has been accused of creating an alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme that yielded similarly large percentage returns. “I feel abused. I feel beaten. I don’t know who to believe,” said Dr. Brad Lerner, who expects to lose nearly $730,000 in an IRA fund with Nadel and Moody.

Neil V. Moody, the president of Viking Management, declined to respond to interview requests. In a statement issued Thursday to investors, Moody confirmed the funds appear depleted. “Unfortunately, just yesterday afternoon we became aware of an extremely serious situation suggesting that the funds may have virtually no remaining value,” Moody wrote.

Moody, who lives part time in Evergreen, Colo., has told several investors interviewed by the Herald-Tribune the funds value totaled $350 million. He said he has contacted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and “all appropriate authorities” to report the situation.

Moody is telling clients that Nadel did all the fund trading, and that Moody had no idea anything was wrong until this week. Nadel, 75, and Moody, 70, operated under the name Scoop Management Inc. in a double storefront at 1816 Main St., across from the Bank of America building. Management appeared in a state of turmoil. Peg Nadel and son Geoff Quisenberry said they could not comment on the size of the company’s assets under management, the number of clients, how much has been lost, or even whether it is accurate to call them a hedge fund operator.

“The way I want to be represented is we are totally open and cooperative with all our clients and the authorities, and that includes the SEC,” Peg Nadel said. “We have nothing to hide. But until our counsel has a statement prepared for us to make public, we cannot comment on what is happening here.” She and Quisenberry both denied reports that employees were emptying out the office.

Arthur Nadel, a hedge-fund manager in Sarasota, Florida, has disappeared and clients are concerned they may have lost hundreds of millions of dollars, according to law enforcement officials.

Nadel, 76, is president of Scoop Management Inc., which oversees funds including Valhalla Investment Partners LP. He was reported missing three days ago after he called his stepson, Geoff Quisenberry, and told him to go to his house where he had left a note, Lieutenant Chuck Lesaltato of the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office said yesterday in a telephone interview.